There is definitely a reason that stores love selling gift cards so much. Did you know that it has been estimated that there is more than a billion dollars’ worth of gift cards that have never been used? This means that these stores are making free money, as they already got paid and did not render a product or service to anyone at all. People simply forget to check their gift card balance, or they forget that they had the gift card at all and never use it. As the holidays approach, we all ought to keep in mind how wasteful this sort of thing is, and we always ought to make that extra effort to spend every dime of the money that is on all of our gift cards. By doing this, we can make sure that we are not being wasteful and that gift cards end up being anything but a waste of money.

Of course, a lot of times we receive gift cards from loved ones from places that we never visit. We might be afraid to tell the loved one that we probably will not use the gift card, because saying something like that might hurt their feelings. This is probably the primary reason why so many gift cards end up going unused. However, there are other options available for those of us who do not want to disappoint our family and friends, but also want to be able to take advantage of the funds that were spent on the gift card. Maybe you know someone who goes to the store regularly and you can give them the card or even sell it to them for a discounted price. If you do not know anyone who can help you with that, there are actually websites that will either buy your unused gift cards off of you themselves or help you to sell them to people who will use them.

The holidays are obviously a time of great joy and cheer, but they are also a time of immense consumerism. If we are going to buy into the consumerism of the holidays, then we ought to make sure that we actually consume rather than just waste. Making sure that all of your gift cards get put to good use is a very good start. Thankfully, there are many places out there that can help us to do this, and we all ought to make sure that we take advantage of such services whenever we can.

This holiday season, make sure that none of the gift cards that you are given end up not getting spent. Either use them yourself the very first chance that you get, of find someone else who will use them for you. Either way, someone is getting a product or service that they want, and the large corporations are not making off with people’s money without offering anything in return. We can all enjoy the holidays and be less wasteful.